


as the morning sun rose

by phenomenology



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/F, Insecurity, Rain, Sharing a Bed, Sleepy Cuddles, Talking, i don't know what this is if i'm honest, i'm feeling soft and i'm missing the gals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:53:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23707942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phenomenology/pseuds/phenomenology
Summary: It’s raining.For half a moment, thoughts sleep addled, she thinks she’s back in Kamordah.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Comments: 25
Kudos: 205





	as the morning sun rose

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> enjoy some lesbians having a sleepy chat

It’s raining.

For half a moment, thoughts sleep addled, she thinks she’s back in Kamordah. The pleasant weight of a body next to her registers as Tori before it all comes back to her.

Beau gives a soft huff into the silence of yet another inn bedroom, staring through the darkness at the vague outline of the rafters on the ceiling as she comes to terms with the fact that she will not be falling asleep again soon. The rain drums a steady pattern against the windowpanes, a very distant rumble of thunder rolling over Beau’s senses. It should soothe her, should be enough to lull her back to sleep, but it isn’t.

The storms always bring about the chance of absence, of spiriting away the warmth that is occupying the bed beside her.

The inn’s bed isn’t necessarily big enough to host both Yasha’s broad shoulders and Beau’s wiry build, but they make it work. They make do with tangled legs and heads pillowed on shoulders and hip bones knocking through sleep clothes. Tonight finds Beau’s right calf between both of Yasha’s while Beau sprawls on her side, head cushioned against Yasha’s clavicle with her face turned up to the roof.

She’s comfortable, but she’s antsy—itching to get up and pace around. It’s not truly an inability to sleep, but that she’s too afraid to fall asleep again, lest she wake up and find Yasha missing from bed.

Beau sighs once more, starting to shift her position in miniscule movements as she tries to assuage whatever restlessness is born from her apprehension.

“Beau?” Yasha’s soft voice cuts through the thrum of rain and the otherwise quiet. “Are you awake?”

 _Shit_.

“Yeah, sorry if I woke you.”

“I was already awake,” Yasha murmurs, arm beneath Beau’s head shifting so that her calloused fingers can trace lazy patterns on the bare skin of Beau’s lower back.

She shivers at the touch, still somewhat unaccustomed to being handled like she’s worth something—with care. The monastery hadn’t been harsh and distant like her parents, but they hadn’t coddled her either. They preached in learning by doing, and Beau was just the lucky son of a bitch who had already been well acquainted with pain by the time she was under their discipline.

Yasha’s warm hands, rough and weathered from countless hours wielding her great sword, brandished the softest touch that Beau had ever experienced. She had before spent several hours wondering if it was born of practice with handling the delicate flowers pressed between the pages of her book.

“What are you thinking about?”

Beau kept staring at the ceiling, her focus on the pads of Yasha’s fingers against her skin. She fixated on the grounding touch, the sound of the rain on the windows, the earthy and rain-soaked smell that Yasha seemed to carry everywhere.

“I don’t know,” Beau answered, eyes lost in the dim. She felt Yasha shift under her, turning to study the monk at her side curiously.

“You don’t know what you’re thinking about?”

“Yeah,” Beau breathed, fingers twisting absent folds in Yasha’s tunic. “My thoughts are kinda scattered right now. I’m exhausted, but I can’t fall asleep.”

“Maybe…if you said your thoughts out loud? It would help?” Yasha’s voice was quiet, hesitant. Beau could hear the catch in the other woman’s tone, the uncertainty of her own idea, like it might be rejected, shot down. Not only was that something Beau would never do, but that did sound like a good idea. Normally, she was the last person alive who would share her thoughts, but she trusted Yasha with them, knew that she wouldn’t handle them carelessly. Unbidden, she pictured Yasha’s warm, weathered hands cupped around Beau’s cheeks as she made sense of Beau’s incoherence, gentle and protective, and shuddered minutely.

Yasha’s hold tightened just a little. Beau spoke up before the inevitable, “are you okay?”

“I like having someone else in the room with me. Back uh…back in Kamordah, Tori and I would share a bed a lot, y’know? I would sneak her into my parents’ house just to have someone with me at night, or we would crash at an inn—anywhere that had a bed, really. That’s why it was so easy to take Jester up on her offer of sharing rooms every time we ended up in an inn on the road. And now uh…with you it’s the same, but it’s different?”

“In what way?” Yasha was still so quiet, her fingertips still tracing aimlessly over the slopes and divots of Beau’s back.

“Less like Jester and more like Tori, but also…also different from Tori?” Beau paused, thoughts far too jumbled to form into words that made any semblance of sense. Yasha waited out the silence with her.

“With Tori it felt a little like a performance, y’know? I really liked her—I loved her—but I also looked up to her. I felt like I had to live up to this criminal persona I built with her, even though it wasn’t entirely who I wanted to be. I mean a big part of it was who I _was_ , but it wasn’t what I _wanted_ to be?” It sounds like a question, but they both know there’s no answer to it, so Beau plows on and Yasha lets her, steady and stalwart.

“But here with—with you and the Mighty Nein, you all know the most honest version of me, so it feels…real. I feel real.”

“Is that a good thing?” Yasha whispers against Beau’s temple, and Beau could cry for how easily Yasha seems to understand her. Most people would hear Beau say she felt real and assume it was something worth celebrating. But Beau had spent so much of her life existing as a false entity that being given the chance to be authentic was terrifying and unknown.

“I want it to be, and I think it is. I’m still trying to figure out if…if the real me is a good person.”

“I think you are,” Yasha says almost immediately, her delivery so simple, automatic, and straightforward that Beau knows she isn’t lying. It sweeps her breath from her lungs and she can’t stop the hitched half-sob that breaks from her. Yasha’s arm stiffens slightly, likely afraid she said something wrong, but Beau chokes out a response before the Aasimar can get too lost in that assumption.

“Thank you.”

Yasha softens at her side and lips brush against Beau’s shaven hairline with a quiet, “of course, Beau.”

“Don’t go,” Beau chokes out, fingers already tangled in Yasha’s tunic tightening further.

The other woman pulls back a little, likely staring down at the monk curled against her. Beau’s gaze has yet to stray from the darkened ceiling above them; too afraid to move and break whatever spell of solitude they have hanging over them.

“Why would I go?”

“The storm,” is all Beau can manage.

Yasha quiets, her fingers going still against Beau’s back, and the monk hates herself for bringing it up. Beau worries that, since they’ve acknowledged it, Yasha might just go now. She would drift away like a storm cloud on the wind, carried to wherever her god bids her and return only when the thunder does.

But instead of the careful detachment that Beau expects, Yasha’s grip around her tightens, even as the other woman rolls to reach for something over the edge of the bed. Beau fights the urge to grip onto the Aasimar, beg her to stay, because she knows that no matter what she says, Yasha will have to leave regardless. If the Stormlord bids it, Yasha does not ignore him.

She’s just begun to prepare herself to say goodbye, to resign herself to sleepless nights, waiting for thunder and rain and flashes of lightning, when something warm and heavy settles around her. She blinks and pulls her tunneling vision away from the ceiling for the first time and looks down. Yasha is smoothing something over her, something thick and large that smells faintly of the Aasimar at her side.

It takes a moment for Beau to realize with a jolt, it’s Yasha’s shawl.

Her eyes snap to Yasha and Beau finds herself breathless at the sight of the celestial in the darkness. Her pale skin seems to glow in the dim, the white ends of her hair a stark contrast against her dusky tunic where the dreads and braids splay across her chest. Yasha’s mismatched eyes flash like lightning as Beau searches the Aasimar’s expression for…something.

Beau’s in the process of trying to get her mouth working to remind Yasha that she had once said she never takes off her shawl, when the other woman beats her to speaking.

“This is my promise that I’m not going anywhere tonight.”

The shawl’s weight suddenly feels a little heavier, a little more significant where it’s snug over Beau’s shoulders. She knows that this means something, likely does not understand the true depth and breadth of it yet, but understands enough. She settles further beneath the warmth of the fur and presses her face more firmly against Yasha’s shoulder, breathes her in. Yasha shifts, turning a little more onto her side so she can wrap both arms around Beau and press the monk just that much closer.

Beau’s nose fills with the smell of rain-soaked earth, sweat, and ozone—all of it distinctly Yasha and immensely comforting. She can feel the Aasimar’s heartbeat against her cheek and hear the steady drum of rain against the window waltzing with the dip and swell of Yasha’s even breaths. It’s a symphony of senses that sends Beau easily off to slumber.

When she wakes in the morning, the storm is long gone. Yasha is asleep at her side, and the shawl still tucked around Beau’s shoulders.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: lionett-beauregard.tumblr.com


End file.
